Evan Ferguson will not play at the World Cup in North America this summer if the Republic of Ireland qualify for the tournament.

The 21-year-old striker recently underwent a second ankle operation in under a year which cut short his time at Roma having joined the Italian club on loan from Brighton last July.

If Ireland win two upcoming playoffs – against the Czech Republic in Prague on March 26th, and then against the winner of Denmark v North Macedonia in Dublin on March 31st – they will qualify for this summer’s World Cup, where they would compete in Group A.

Ireland manager Heimir Hallgrímsson also revealed West Brom winger Mikey Johnston is unlikely to recover in time for the potential Group A opener against South Korea (June 12th, 3am Irish time) in Guadalajara, Mexico.

“I think it’s four to six months [for Ferguson’s recovery],” said Hallgrímsson. “The same for Mikey. I think he had an operation as well. Normally that would take a few months to heal.”

Ferguson has had a nightmarish few seasons, with ankle and knee injuries slowing his meteoric rise in the Premier League. He scored three goals for Ireland in four qualifiers last year, in addition to five goals in 22 sporadic appearances for Roma before having surgery earlier this month.

Troy Parrott filled the void left by Ferguson, scoring five goals for Ireland in the qualifying wins over Portugal and Hungary last November before continuing his goalscoring spree at Dutch club AZ Alkmaar.

“It was tough first few weeks [after Budapest] because everybody expected Troy to score three goals in every game,” said Hallgrímsson. “That’s a heavy backpack you need to carry into every game. I think he’s now relaxing and scoring. He comes into [camp] again at the correct time.”

Hallgrímsson said he and his assistant coach John O’Shea had a discussion with David McGoldrick before naming the 25-man squad for the upcoming World Cup playoffs. The 38-year-old has scored 14 times for Barnsley in League One, however, Hallgrímsson instead opted to stick with Johnny Kenny and Adam Idah as centre-forward cover.

“McGoldrick’s name came up when we were looking at our striker options. We decided to give him a call just to see if we needed him if he would be ready. He was surprised to have this call but we just wanted to see what options we had.”

But Hallgrímsson confirmed McGoldrick is not on standby for the playoffs, adding: “We might look at him at a later date.”